


in my darkest hours

by coruscatingcatastrophe



Series: echoes in the dark 'verse [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, Anxiety, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Minor Injuries, Worried Lance (Voltron), he's trying his best but he's still human, keith's mishaps on the training deck from lance's perspective, lance just wants to be there for him, lots of emotions, mentions of past trauma, questionable decision making, uncovering secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26926450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coruscatingcatastrophe/pseuds/coruscatingcatastrophe
Summary: “You keep saying that. You keep saying you’resorry.You never tell me what for. You never tell me why you’re out on the training deck so late, voluntarily letting yourself get beaten to a pulp by our resident asshole robot. I don’t want you to tell me you’re sorry. I want you to give me areason.”—echoes in the dark, ch. 1_____Lance finally gets some answers, but it doesn't give him the closure he was hoping for.
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: echoes in the dark 'verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926937
Comments: 2
Kudos: 59





	in my darkest hours

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for mentions of past rape/non-con, but i wasn't quite sure what to rate this one? if you've read up to chapter 7 of eitd, though, nothing referenced in this oneshot should be new or surprising, and nothing graphic is described. as always though, please stay safe while reading <3

Shit starts to go south immediately after Shiro’s disappearance, but it takes a turn for the _shittiest_ a week after Black claims Keith. 

In retrospect, Lance is just surprised it didn’t happen sooner. It’s what he thinks to himself the first time it happens, on one of his worst insomnia-ridden nights, after he passes by the training deck and his ears tune in to the sound of metal clanging against metal behind the doors. A constant _clang,_ pause, _clang,_ pause, _CLANG!,_ pause. 

He already has strong suspicions about what’s happening, but his eyes immediately confirm it for him when he presses the button to let him inside, blinking away the spots from the bright lights overhead to find Keith locked in a battle with the gladiator. _Yeah,_ he thinks, _okay. I probably should’ve expected this a whole lot sooner._

Keith doesn’t notice him enter the room; Lance isn’t surprised about this, either. Keith has the sort of single-minded focus that’s great for keeping him and his teammates alive in battle. It has the unfortunate side-effect, though, of muting important things like _personal well-being._

Exhibit A happens too quickly for Lance to be able to call the gladiator off in time. Exhibit A is Keith, knocked off his feet and flung back across the floor, but not before taking a nasty hit to the head from the butt of the droid’s sword. 

Lance winces as the thought flits through his head: _shit, that's probably gonna give him a concussion._ Then he realizes that the gladiator is still _moving,_ making its way towards Keith’s still form and remembers his voice: _“End simulation.”_

And there’s Keith, slowly pushing himself up by his hands, groaning and wincing as his hand flies up to his head. It comes away _wet,_ and Lance’s alarm goes up by a hundred. It doesn’t go back down the closer he gets to Keith, sinking to his knees in front of him to assess the damage. There are a dozen tiny slashes decorating his arms and another one scraping along his jawline, and though they all have about the same deepness as paper cuts, they still spill out little streams of blood that make Lance feel ill. They must sting, he thinks, because Keith flinches away when he first touches him, so he murmurs, “Sorry, I’m sorry,” and then he says, “I think we should get you to the medbay to check for a concussion.” 

Keith says nothing to that, so Lance takes it as silent acceptance. Helps him to his feet, gently tucks an arm around his waist, and quietly coaxes him off the deck and down the halls. 

The medbay is, in Lance’s unprofessional architectural opinion, _absurdly_ far from the training deck. Which makes absolutely no sense, because didn’t Alteans ever get hurt when they used to use it? Or maybe not, since Allura has yet to do even semi-severe damage to herself, but _still._ Alteans aren’t the only people who used to frequent this castle, and now there’s humans on it, so maybe they should visit the idea of some redesigning action in the future. Because as Allura and Coran so often put it: _“you humans are one of the most delicate species we have ever encountered in our ten thousand years!”_

Lance’s complaints about the distance aside, they finally make it, and he settles Keith onto the nearest infimary bed and goes to get the first-aid kit. 

“Lance.” Keith doesn’t speak until Lance has already checked for a concussion (he doesn’t have one, thank stars), finished plastering band-aids all over one arm and has moved on to the next one, but when he does, it’s unexpectedly . . . small. Shameful, eyes dim and with that glassy quality he can’t seem to shake lately—the one that shoots glass-shard-pinpricks into Lance’s heart and lodges them there—he mumbles it quietly, mumbles it like there’s a part of him that’s hoping Lance won’t hear, “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” 

Those glass shards are slowly digging deeper, filling Lance with a deep, _bleeding_ ache. An ache that isn’t for himself, but for his hurting friend, who is so clearly and viscerally suffering. 

It makes sense, of course, that Keith is taking Shiro’s absence worse than the rest of them. Shiro is Keith’s _brother,_ and he’s the only family—that Lance knows of, at least—that Keith has. Lance can’t imagine how awful Keith must be feeling. He’s tried to imagine it a few times, anyway: tried to put himself in the position where maybe it was Veronica who went missing in space for an entire year, getting her back and finding out she had been held captive and _tortured_ during that time, just to lose her all over again. He’s never able to make it very far without feeling the sting of oncoming tears just at the _thought_ of someone hurting her, or any of his siblings. 

Lance is scared for Shiro, but not nearly in the same bone-deep way he knows must grip Keith at all hours. He hasn’t seen the boy relax once since it happened. He wonders how much sleep Keith has been getting—if he’s been getting any at all. By the deep, midnight-bruise circles beneath his eyes, and the fact that they’re _here_ in the middle of the night instead of their beds, it wouldn’t be hard for Lance to believe that Keith hasn’t slept any since Shiro went missing. 

So with this in mind, it isn’t hard for Lance to empathize with Keith. There’s no way he’d be able to be mad at him, anyway, when he looks so sad and small and defeated, tense like he’s half-expecting _Lance_ to hit him. 

So, “It’s alright, Keith,” he finally says with a tired sigh. He just wants to get him cleaned up and then get him back to his room, where he’ll hopefully be able to get some sleep now that he’s worked out some of that tense energy. It occurs to him then that he doesn’t know how long Keith was out there before he found him. It could have been _hours._

He makes a note to check the logs, later. And then he says, “Just . . . don’t let this happen again, okay?” 

“Yeah, okay,” Keith mutters. Lance finishes the last of the cuts on his arms and moves on to the one on his face, gingerly applying the antiseptic and wincing in sympathy when he sees Keith quietly doing the same. 

(There’s another part of his mind that’s honed in on how _close_ Keith is to him; the feel of his skin beneath Lance’s fingertips, the way his mouth is _right there,_ and he can feel his small exhales against his own face. But Lance is well-trained in the art of ignoring these things, and he ignores them now. He’ll keep ignoring them. Loving Keith from afar is practically part of his job description now, but the most important thing he can do right now is be his right-hand. Lance is never, _ever_ going to screw that up by letting his feelings come between them.) 

The thing is, as Lance walks Keith back to his room, watching his bedroom door shut behind him until he’s left alone in the silent, blue hallway—the thing is, Lance _believes_ that this is the last time. He believes Keith's quiet little, _“Yeah, okay”;_ he _believes_ that now that he’s gotten this out once, now that Lance has patched him up and proved himself to be a reliable source of moral support and sent him back on his way, that this will be the last time Keith will put himself at risk like this. He hopes there won’t be a next time, but if there is a next time, he hopes Keith will come to him first, will ask him to come along, or better yet, will maybe _talk_ to him so he doesn’t have to keep bottling up the emotions that are on the verge of snapping him in half. 

Lance believes, and he hopes. 

In retrospect, maybe part of it is Lance’s fault that things unravel so quickly from there. He’s always been one to let his hope and belief in the shining, better picture blind him to the darker realities around him. 

  
  


_____

  
  


He’s tired enough after dropping Keith off, that first night, to go right to bed after seeing Keith to his. He falls into sleep, dreaming of nothing, hoping for a better morning to come. 

He forgets to check the training logs. 

  
  


_____

  
  


It isn’t until Shiro’s been back for nearly a full phoeb that Lance acknowledges the little prickle of fear within his ribcage. 

When he’d been wrong about Keith ending his nightly escapades to the training deck, he expounded on a new hope: _okay. Keith will get better when we get Shiro back._ For the timing being, he hoped he would be enough: he started making it a habit to check the training deck on his nightly walks. Luckily, Keith wasn't out there _every_ night, or even every week, in the beginning. It wasn't enough to be . . . _concerned_ about; at least, not beyond the natural worry that they all feel for Keith. _Maybe,_ Lance thought, _maybe this is the only way he has to cope._ And maybe it isn’t the _healthiest_ coping mechanism, but at least he had Lance looking out for him, and at least, he thought, it would end when Shiro came back. 

(He hadn't thought about the _if_ of that hope; they were _going_ to get Shiro back. They _were.)_

And Shiro does come back. Dirty and exhausted and a shell of himself, but he still _comes back,_ and he’s still _him._ And Lance breathes a mental sigh of relief, not just for his found teammate, but also for the one who’s been struggling along so much without him. 

Lance thinks, watching Keith and Shiro reunite: _now everything can start getting better again._ Now _Keith_ can get better, and they can close out this awful chapter of their Voltron days, and Keith can start _sleeping_ again.

He finds Keith with a sprained ankle that very same night. And then in a similar state three nights after that. A week after that, and then it doesn't stop. And Lance starts having nightmares. 

They’re awful from the very beginning. He dreams of Keith dying in a million different ways. He dreams of rushing onto the deck only to find Keith going down, again and again, beneath the blade of the gladiator. Stabs to the heart and blows to the head that are far too severe to survive. Knives in his ribcage and the sound of his neck _snapping—_ and it’s the most _awful_ sound he’s ever heard in his life, even if it is only in his dreams. 

But the worst ones—the ones that wake Lance up in a _panic,_ the ones that grip him so tightly that he throws back the covers and _sprints_ to the training deck only to find it as empty and dark as he left it when he hauled Keith out hours ago—are the ones where he’s too late. The nightmares where he emerges onto the deck to find Keith’s already lifeless body on the floor, blood seeping into the tile, because Keith _never_ puts the mats down before he starts a simulation, and it would be so _easy_ for one wrong landing to end his life. 

These are the nights where Lance can’t let go of his anxiety until he walks to breakfast in the morning; when he sees for himself that Keith is perfectly intact, picking at his food while Pidge chatters a mile a minute at him. And then that noose around his heart relaxes, and Lance can breathe again—

Until he finds Keith again that night, bleeding and cursing as he examines his wounds with a carelessness that drives Lance to sheer _terror_ some nights, and blood-boiling _fury_ on others, and there’s never any in-between. 

He wants to tell the others. He _needs_ to, and he has no choice but to admit that now, both to himself and to Keith. But the first time he brings up the concept, Keith shuts it down the instant the sentence leaves his mouth. 

The worst thing of all is that Keith isn’t _angry._ If Keith was angry, Lance would be able to argue him down: he knows how Keith thinks when he’s angry, knows how to weave his way around his biting words and searing snarls. But there’s no anger in his face when Keith looks up at him with those dark indigo eyes of his, wide and glassy and _begging_ him: _“Please_ don’t tell them, Lance, they already worry enough, please don’t make me another problem they have to deal with, please don’t make me a problem _Shiro_ has to deal with, he’s already dealing with so much, Lance _please.”_

Lance tells him: “You could never be a problem,” but Keith is so frantic when he shakes his head, and he says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Lance, _please Lance, please—”_ and the sight of him at once breaks his heart and makes him feel _sick,_ so he finds himself agreeing just to make him stop _looking_ like that. Then he bites his tongue, nods, and checks one last time to make sure Keith doesn’t have a concussion before taking him back to his room. 

Things are bad, and Lance _knows_ they’re bad, but he doesn’t know what to do. Part of him thinks he should go ahead and tell one of the others anyway—Shiro or Allura, who are by far more responsible and levelheaded than Lance is capable of being—but then he thinks about Keith’s broken glass eyes, thinks about telling him that he betrayed his trust, thinks about having to _look_ at that betrayal, wonders if Keith _would_ be angry then, if he would _hate_ Lance, and Lance knows it’s selfish but he can’t _stand_ the thought of Keith ever hating him. 

So it’s probably, definitely the wrong thing to do, but Lance tells himself that he can manage this on his own. He tells himself: _at least he lets you help him._ And really, he tries to convince himself, it’s good that they’re at this point. That Keith will accept his help. Because there had been a time when Keith was _Mr. I-need-no-one,_ and now he at least can admit when an injury is too bad for him to be able to handle alone. Even the ones that aren’t so bad—papercut sword pricks—he still lets Lance fret over and bandage up, instead of just dousing them in rubbing alcohol and going to bed. And that’s . . . Lance can work with that. It makes him feel a little less afraid, because at least Keith lets him _be here._ It’s enough. It has to be. 

Most nights, he can force himself to believe it. But on the bad nights, Lance sits on the floor of the training deck in the dark, back to the door, and he isn’t so sure he is enough. He contemplates seriously going to someone else, even against Keith’s wishes, even if Keith hates him forever and never forgives him. But it’s the middle of the night, and going to Shiro’s or Allura’s door means leaving the training deck, and that means he might not _be here_ if Keith comes back, so he stays where he is. And then in the morning, he’s able to talk himself back down. _It’s fine, I can handle this, I can take care of Keith until he’s ready to work through whatever this is, he’s going to be okay and no one else has to get involved, Keith doesn’t have to hate me for breaking his trust, I can be enough for him._

The assurances he feeds himself don’t quell the guilt that settles low into his chest, every time he lets Keith continue on in his silence. He doesn’t try to fight down or deny the guilt—he knows he deserves it. Whatever his intentions, he knows this can’t last, knows that the longer he stays silent, the longer Keith will. 

He _will_ say something, he tells himself, in the moments when he has time to seriously assess the situation. He’ll say something about this, he’ll push and he’ll prod and do _whatever_ it takes to get Keith to talk—

But then the next time comes around, and Keith’s big beautiful eyes are dark again with pain and desperation, and Lance—can’t do it. Not tonight. 

_Next time, then,_ he promises himself, but the words coalesce into a bitter lump in his throat. 

  
  


_____

Sometimes Lance will look at Keith, bruising and bleeding and dark-eyed with exhaustion, and think that the question he most wants the answer to is _why?_ And he wants to ask him over that bleeding, cut skin; over swelling, broken wrists. _Why do you do this to yourself, Keith?_

And it just makes him so _upset_ sometimes, so scared and _fed up,_ honestly, because he’s here night after night and all Keith will ever give him is: _I’m sorry, I’m sorry._ And it’s heartbreaking sometimes but sometimes Lance wonders if he really means it—if he’s sorry that he does it, or sorry that he lets it happen, or just sorry that Lance finds him. He doesn’t know, and Keith won’t tell. _I’m sorry._ Lance has never hated two words more in his life. 

He has to find out. If it’s the last thing he ever does—he has to know. He has to do everything he can to _help_ him, because he’s never seen anyone who needed someone to stand by them and hold them up more in his _life._ Keith needs someone, and Lance wishes things were different—wishes that he could be _wanted_ instead of _needed,_ but he’s in love with him and he _loves_ him so he’ll be the one. Even if it’s all he’ll ever be to him, he’ll be the one Keith can turn to when things are hard and bad and he’s hurting. 

But sometimes, he thinks the not knowing will drive him clinically insane. He isn’t sure how much longer they can put up with this before it becomes too much. Before it breaks Keith—and Lance goes tumbling right in after him. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Lance thinks he gets his answer, that night over a swelling, broken, scarred wrist. He’s so _angry_ until suddenly he isn’t—until suddenly he’s stricken, because finally Keith is giving more than he ever has, but Lance is coming to the sudden horrific realization that maybe he isn’t as prepared for Keith’s truths as he thought he was. 

The worst thing about it, he thinks, might be how _innocuous_ it looks. Just a single, slight raise of pale skin; a straight line, not even two inches long. But Lance doesn’t need to be told how it got there, or who put it there, because he knows. 

He feels like the universe’s _worst_ human being. He wants to cry. 

But Lance _can’t_ cry, because Keith’s wrist is still broken and he still needs to set it; he curses the concept of Altean invention, because for all the miracle-working the cryopods can do, they can’t fix broken bones that aren’t properly aligned. Or, technically they _could,_ but Keith’s wrist would be permanently crooked, and he’s pretty sure that’s not something either of them want. 

So he sets it, and the tiny, pained sound Keith makes is worse than if he would have screamed, and Lance feels his eyes burning but blinks back his tears as best as he can while Keith is calling him an insensitive douchebag, but there’s this little wobbling motion of his mouth like he’s trying to _smile,_ even through all of this, and Lance is overwhelmed by the want to pull Keith into his arms and hold him there, to keep him safe until everything bad that’s ever happened to him goes away. 

But he doesn’t do that. He helps Keith into the pod and he stares at the timer for a while, the blue, Altean numbers searing into his vision until he can still see them against the backs of his eyelids when he closes them, and then he resolves himself to do something he’s been putting off for a long time. 

Really, there’s no reason why Lance hasn’t checked the logs yet, except for his own fear of what the number of hours is going to be. But that fear now is evolving into something determined, because now he knows _something,_ and that something is a thing that he is never going to let happen again. 

He can’t keep letting Keith hurt like this. And in order to properly be there for him, Lance is going to have to stay levelheaded about this, so he won’t lose his cool again like he had earlier. 

He knows he’s going to find out things that he isn’t going to enjoy hearing. But he has to be prepared for them, and he has to be able to _listen_ to Keith without being overcome by his own emotions, because it doesn’t _matter_ if he doesn’t _like_ hearing about the sad, dark things. Those sad, dark things are part of who Keith is, and they’re part of why he’s hurting, and maybe Lance doesn’t have the full picture yet—maybe there’s a part of him that doesn’t even entirely _want_ it—but he’s going to put the pieces together eventually. And when he knows, it’s not going to change how much he loves Keith, but it is going to change Keith’s ability to trust Lance, and _that’s_ what matters. 

Lance wants Keith to trust him. He thinks he might want it more than he’s ever wanted anything—he might want it more than he wants to go home, even. It feels almost like blasphemy against his family, thinking that—but it doesn’t stop it from being true. He knows that his family is back on Earth, safe and sound and together. They have each other. 

_Who did Keith have?_ Lance doesn’t know the answer; it’s another one he isn’t sure he wants the answer to. _Where was Shiro when that happened?_

But he stops asking questions that he isn’t going to get the answer to tonight. And he leaves Keith with the promise that he’ll be back before he wakes up—he’s going to show him that he is _always_ going to be here—and makes that too-long trek back to the training deck that he dragged Keith from not an hour earlier. 

From there, it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to pull up the logs, to pull up _Keith’s_ specifically. The stats that come up automatically are from the total time he’s spent in all three deca-phoebs they’ve been on the castle; that number by itself is large, definitely bigger than Lance’s, but it doesn’t really tell him anything significant. So he taps in further by the decaphoeb, by the phoeb, and then he clicks on the one they’re currently in. 

Lance nearly swallows his tongue when he sees the vargas stacked on top of one another. Because it’s— _bad._ However bad Lance was expecting it to be, this is worse. 

It’s a miracle he hasn’t worked himself to death. It’s a _miracle_ Lance has never been late, that none of his nightmares have come true. Because Keith hasn’t just been fighting into the late, ungodly hours of the night; he’s been fighting during the day, too, beyond normal training hours; between meals, after meetings, _before_ meetings, early in the morning when no one else is awake, somehow _just_ missing Lance before he goes back to his room. 

Lance wants to cry again, but he doesn’t. He takes a deep breath, blinks his blurry eyes dry, and nods to himself. _Okay. Okay._

He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer, no matter what. But he needed to know. And now he does. 

Now he has to go back to Keith, wait for him to wake up, and then make sure _this_ ends. 

_____

  
  


Lance doesn’t want to leave Keith alone on Svlenka for even a second—he’s having an _awful_ day, and they can all tell without him having to say anything, and the last thing Lance wants to do is leave him by himself when he’s like this—but the countess wouldn’t take no for an answer, and eventually Keith had gotten tired of listening to her wheedle. _“Please,_ just go dance with her,” he’d muttered into Lance’s ear, low enough to not be overheard, “She’s not going to go away until you do. It’s not like I’m going anywhere, anyway.” 

So, reluctantly, Lance goes. The countess rambles to him about her stepchildren and intermittently steps on his toes and thwacks him with her third arm, and it only takes the time between one dance and the next of watching her drink one of those sparkling, fluorescent beverages to put together that she is very drunk. And she’s getting drunker by the sip. 

Another glance around tells him that she’s not the only one. Nearly everyone on the dance floor is looking a little tipsy, and nearly everyone _not_ on the dance floor appears to have one of those fizzy drinks in hand. Peculiarly, the political figures—such as the countess—seem to be the most drunk of everyone. 

The positive of this is that the Svlenkians are _incredibly_ easy to get along with. Lance spies Allura swirling across the floor with one of the twelve Svlenkian princesses, watches the orange-skinned alien toss her head back in a laugh at something Allura says, and feels relief settle over him. This has been the easiest it’s been to secure an alliance with a planet in a very long time—maybe _ever—_ and Lance is glad, because all of the arguing and bartering they’ve been doing lately has been weighing on all of them. Lance thinks with even more guilt of Keith, thinks that he should really get back to him soon. This is where the negative comes in. 

The countess passes out on him. Like, she goes full-body-weightless in his arms, doesn’t move no matter how many times Lance says her name or pokes her in the face. She’s _out,_ and this means Lance has to drag all two-hundred-something pounds of her off the dance floor in search of somewhere to lay her down. Luckily, while Lance is scanning the room, a tall, six-armed man makes his way over. _“Naila,”_ he sighs—the countess’s name—, and then rests a hand on his chest and bows in greeting. Lance would mirror the action, except . . . well. 

“Apologies for my wife. She thinks she has a higher tolerance for _drui’shei_ than she does,” the man says, though there’s a fond glint of amusement in his eyes as he looks at her that underlies the exasperation in his words. Truthfully, he looks a little wobbly on his feet as well, though not nearly so bad as the woman in Lance’s arms. This man’s wife, supposedly. 

He squints at him, and then—yes, after a moment, he recognizes him from the banquet earlier, sitting beside the countess. “You’re Erels’bei?” he says, hoping he’d gotten the pronunciation right. 

He hadn’t, but the Svlenkian laughs it off. These people really are some of the chillest aliens Lance has ever come across. “Erss’bai,” he corrects. So it’s with no small amount of relief that Lance leaves the countess safely in the arms of her husband, shares a pleasant goodbye with the count that he’s probably never going to meet again, and returns to Keith. 

Except—when Lance returns to their table, Keith isn’t there. A bolt of quiet alarm rockets through him as he spins back toward the crowd, eyes searching the sea of rainbow-hued aliens for a familiar head of dark hair. _Where’s Keith?_ His heart begins to pound uneasily, even as he tries to tell himself to calm down. _He has to be around here somewhere._

He doesn’t find Keith, but he _does_ find Allura, making her way off of the dance floor with the same orange-skinned princess on her arm. He rushes over while trying to make it look like he’s _not_ rushing, but his attempts to appear collected completely dissolve as he demands: “Have you seen Keith recently?” He turns back to scan the crowd again. _No Keith._

Allura frowns immediately at the question, obviously concerned by Lance’s obvious unease. “I . . . no, I haven’t. Do we all need to reconvene and look for him?” 

The Svlenkian princess watches their exchange with curious, orange-flamed eyes. “I could have someone call for him over the speakers,” she offers. For a moment, Lance genuinely considers it. But then he thinks of how much Keith would _hate_ that, and he really doesn’t want to sic a search party of strangers on him when he doesn’t even know if he’s really missing or not. 

“I . . . no,” Lance decides, after a hesitant moment. “Thank you, but I’ll keep searching for him, myself. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. I’ll let you know when I find him, Allura.” 

“Alright . . .” Allura says, but he can feel her watching him go as he makes his way back through the crowd. 

He hasn’t checked the bathrooms yet, he realizes suddenly, and feels kind of ridiculous for not thinking of that first. So he does that next, to no avail. The bathrooms are completely empty save for the couple sobbing in each other’s arms by the sinks. Lance politely avoids them as he heads back out into the ballroom, worry truly beginning to writhe under his skin now—but then, _there._ He sees the shock of black hair and breathes out a long sigh of relief, feeling suddenly foolish for his fear as he takes calm, measured steps over to him. _“There_ you are. I’ve been looking for you, Keith.” 

Keith spins around at the sound of his name, brows scrunching until he locks onto Lance and he— _lights up._ Lance carefully notes the glass of alcohol in his hand, suspecting that it’s probably the reason behind the brightness that’s so rare in Keith’s eyes, these days. The reason for the small smile playing at the corners of his mouth—even rarer, but so, so beautiful. Lance’s heart twists a little as he tries to remember the last time he saw Keith really smile. It’s been too long. 

He has to be pretty thoroughly drunk, Lance thinks. But Keith sounds reasonably sober when he says, “I was looking for you, too,” so Lance smiles with some relief, letting his concerns die down a little as he steps closer into Keith’s space. 

And then he says: “Hey, let’s dance,” and Lance realizes that, seemingly sober or not, Keith is _definitely_ wasted. An hour ago, the _last_ thing Keith wanted to do was dance. Keith on a _good_ day usually pretends that he doesn’t want to dance, even though he and Lance both know that he enjoys it—that he enjoys it _with Lance,_ at least. It’s pretty adorable, the way Keith will bite down smiles and hold back laughs and say: _I’m only doing this because I like you, you know._ That’s what he used to say, anyway, back when they were just friends—back when they were just _becoming_ friends, and their eyes were lighter and their smiles were wider and Shiro was still present and Keith wasn’t so haunted. 

But Lance isn’t going to go down that path, right now. _Right now,_ Keith does want to dance, so Lance is going to dance with him. First, though— 

“How many of these have you had?” he asks, and gingerly tugs the glass out of Keith’s grip. Keith frowns for a moment, brows scrunching cutely in contemplation before telling him what Lance had pretty much already inferred: “I forgot. I think I’m a little bit drunk.” 

“You’re _very_ drunk,” Lance corrects, but Keith looks so at ease and _happy,_ in a way he so rarely looks these days, that he isn’t really worried about it. He figures Keith probaby had a glass or two, taken in by the bright colors and bubbly consistency, and just didn’t realize how strong they were until he was already not-sober. Keith doesn’t usually drink at these things, so it’s nice that for once, he’s let himself unwind a little. Lance isn’t going to worry too much about it. 

So when Keith asks to dance again, Lance dances with him. Nothing _too_ crazy, since he’s still trying to determine exactly how tipsy Keith is, but Keith still seems to possess most of his motor function capacities, so a few minutes into it, Lance lets himself relax. He figures they’ll dance a while and then he’ll take Keith home and tuck him into bed with a glass of water, hoping that tomorrow the hangover won’t be _too_ awful. He’ll have to find Allura before they go, of course, let her know that Keith is safe and sound, but he can worry about that later. Right now, he listens to the sound of Keith’s laughter like it’s one of his favorite songs from Earth on repeat—it’s been so long since he heard it. He hadn’t even realized how much he missed it, but here it is, and here he is: quiet rasping laughter bubbling up every time Lance spins him, grinning brilliantly as he looks up at him, saying, “I love you, _so_ much.” 

And Lance smiles too, his own heart feeling light and full, and he tells him, “I love you too,” and later he’ll think that if this was a truly good night, the conversation would have ended right there. 

But it doesn’t end right there. Because then Keith loops his arms around his neck, presses their foreheads together. Their faces are so close that he can feel Keith’s smile—which just makes what he says next that much more disconcerting. 

“I mean it, you know. I really love you, and I know it’s _real._ Because you . . .” He sighs, all gusting warm air against Lance’s mouth, and tells him, “you’re the _best_ boyfriend, and—and like, I _know that,_ because I used to have the _worst_ boyfriend. And he was the opposite of you in . . . _all_ the ways.” 

He just—says that. So easily, _calmly,_ like he and Lance both know what he’s talking about, like there’s nothing off or alarming about what he’s just said at all. 

But it _is_ off, and it sends alarm straight to Lance’s heart as all of the warm, good things from moments ago drain out of him. “What? Keith . . . what are you talking about?” 

He scans Keith’s face, looking for any signs that he’s just really out of it now, _desperately_ hoping that he’s just talking nonsense, the way drunk people are wont to do. But he already knows that Keith isn’t, knows it even before he blinks at him, confused indigo eyes and a lax shrug, like he doesn’t really get the sudden shift in the conversation. 

And he says, like it’s nothing: “Like . . . you’re _nice_ to me.” 

He says like it’s nothing: “You treat me like a person. You let me cry when I’m sad. You try to make me feel better even when it’s just me being stupid.” 

He says, like it’s _nothing:_ “I know you probably want to have sex with me because you’re a normal person, but you haven’t _made me_ because you care when I’m uncomfortable, and that’s just . . . really nice.” And then he adds that Lance is a really good person, like it's something he should be _commended_ for. 

Lance feels suddenly, _viciously_ sick. Not just physically, but in every transcendental way. Suddenly he’s playing back past interactions: every time he’s kissed or touched Keith and in some way it’s ended negatively. Usually _silently—_ because it’s like pulling teeth to get the boy to admit when he’s not comfortable, and Lance has been wracking his brain for weeks trying to figure out _why._

Keith pushing him away—Keith out on the training deck even after they got Shiro back—Keith a _mess,_ sobbing at the foot of Red’s particle barrier that night and the sheer _anguish_ Lance had sensed, both from him and Red herself. And suddenly all of the pieces are clicking in Lance’s head, and he _hates_ the picture that he’s left with. Because that means—

It means—

Keith is frowning at him, anxiety erasing the brightness from his eyes. “Lance, what’s wrong?” The worry scrawling across his face is _eviscerating._ Lance needs to pull it together. 

He needs to get Keith back to the castle before he realizes the full weight of what he’s just told him. 

Lance carefully guides Keith off the dance floor, scanning the room for Allura so he can let her know they’re heading out. But she’s pulling the same move Keith had earlier—nowhere to be found—and the closest Lance gets is Shiro, who’s sitting at the table they’d all started at and sipping from a glass of regular, non-alcoholic water. He looks up as they approach, confusion creasing his brows most likely at Keith’s behavior. He’s being clingy, head tucked right near Lance’s neck, and while this is a good thing because it means Lance isn’t going to have to put up a fight to get him home, it’s extremely out of character. Keith isn’t a very big public-displays-of-affection type. 

Lance feels increasingly more nauseated by the second. And then Keith hums, this little, _content_ sound, and he says: “Did I tell you that I think you’re really nice?” He _did,_ and Lance’s heart _wrenches_ as he fully comprehends, for the first time, that Keith’s standards of what makes a person _good_ and _nice_ are the bare minimum of human decency. And it’s not his fault—in _any_ way, at all—that this is the way he’s learned to think about people. But it’s tearing Lance's heart into shreds all the same. 

“Is he drunk?” Shiro’s confusion is rapidly being overtaken by alarm. He’s straightening up, eyes darkening in a way that makes Lance uneasy. He doesn’t know if it’s because of the situation at hand, or if it’s Shiro himself. His problems with the older paladin aren’t really relevent at the moment, but every time Lance looks at him, all he can think about is how he almost convinced Keith to leave the team. Regardless of whether it was intentional or not, it’s not something Lance is willing to forgive yet. And there’s no way in hell Lance is handing Keith over to him tonight—Shiro is beginning to make to his feet, hands reaching out like he’s expecting Lance to pass off his little brother like a stuffed animal—even as he looks at him and wonders, with slowly mounting horror: _do you know?_

“Don’t worry, Shiro,” Keith mumbles then, words slurring a bit, “S’not like last time.” 

_Last time._ Shiro is pale, eyes dark as if he’s remembering something that Lance knows nothing about. He isn’t sure he _wants_ to know anything about it. He’s positive now that Shiro knows exactly, though. 

Keith plaintively says, fingers reaching to grasp the fabric of Lance’s shirt tightly, “I want to—wanna sleep, Lance.” Lance closes his eyes for a moment, tightening his grip on him ever-so-slightly as he promises to take him home. “You can sleep soon, okay?” 

Keith’s exceptional drunk-functioning-motor-skills are beginning to wear off as they start the trek back to the castle. They’re docked planetside, thank _stars,_ because Lance doesn’t quite trust his hands to operate a lion right now. He barely trusts himself with his handful of boyfriend, who drowsily mumbles the entire way back: _“I want to go home, I want to go home.”_

Lance tries to tell him, throat tight as he all but carries him into the castle, “We’re home now, sweetheart, see?” But Keith lifts his head from Lance’s neck briefly only to look around, squint, and shake his head. _“No . . . no.”_ The aching sadness in his eyes is one Lance knows all too well—homesickness. But not for the castle. 

Lance’s breath snags on nothing as he wonders when it last was that Keith _had_ a home. But he can’t linger on that for very long, because he can’t afford to think about anything but getting Keith safely to his room. If he loses his focus for even a _second,_ he worries that he’s not going to be able to hold it together long enough to get Keith through the night. And _Keith_ is the priority right now; Lance will have time to process the reality of the situation later, but Keith needs him _right now._ There’s an awful, _awful_ word repeating in his head every time he looks at him, screaming at him in horror with every moment that passes with his boyfriend in his arms. Repeating as he settles Keith onto his bed; repeating as he chokes out a promise to return soon, hardly able to _stand_ the childlike anxiety in Keith’s wide, glossy eyes as he leaves him. 

Lance can’t stand the thought of him worrying for any longer than absolutely necessary, so when his fingers freeze around the handle of the refrigerator door, he forcibly _yanks_ them away, paying no mind to the way his hand shakes before closing around a water pouch. He doesn’t sprint back to Keith, but he’s only barely able to keep himself from doing so. He still feels like he’s out of breath when he steps back into the room to find Keith, struggling out of his shirt with little success. 

There’s a part of Lance that feels suddenly dirty at the sight of Keith like this—a part of him that thinks: _this isn’t for me to see._ Keith is vulnerable in a way Lance has never seen before—vulnerable in a way that Keith, _sober,_ wouldn’t be okay with Lance seeing. 

He’s probably going to be so _horrified_ in the morning, or so, _so_ angry. But even as he thinks this, Lance forces himself to take a deep breath, and goes over to help Keith with his shirt. Because Keith in the morning isn’t going to be happy about this, but Keith in this moment needs him to be here. So that’s what he has to do. 

A little of the fighter in Keith reemerges when Lance is trying to get him to drink _water,_ of all things. He frowns at it like he's presented him with a bowl of food goo instead, tries to push it away, insisting that, "I'm not thirsty." When Lance insists that he _has_ to is when Keith finally relents, but he keeps his eyebrows scrunched unhappily as he drinks it, and he crumples up the pouch as soon as he's done with it, with the sort of intent that could be taken for violence if he wasn't so inebriated that he can barely press it back into Lance's hand without dropping it between them. 

And then he tries to kiss Lance. His eyes are all wide, confused fever-brightness in the low light when Lance firmly tells him _no,_ and Lance feels his own eyes burn a little when he asks him, “Why not?” When he tries to tell him, "It . . . it doesn't matter," and Lance's stomach turns in _revulsion._ He tries not to wonder who _told him that,_ who made him _believe_ that. But he knows that the question is going to keep him up all night. 

It’s like for every answer he gets out of Keith, the more questions crop up in their wake; it’s like cutting off the head of a hydra only to find more and more monstrous ones rearing their terrifying heads. And he wonders how long Keith has been fighting these monsters all by himself—wonders how he’s _survived_ it. And then he thinks about the scars on Keith’s wrists, and that horror reaches a crescendo in Lance’s head, and he _can’t_ fight the need to pull Keith into his arms anymore. Not when he looks like _this,_ on the verge of tears and spilling apologies that he _shouldn’t_ feel like he has to make. 

How long has Keith been apologizing for things that aren’t his fault? _How long_ was he planning on keeping all of this pain to himself, letting it tear him apart like this? 

And then Keith sniffles and _whimpers_ and whispers: _“You weren’t s’posed to ever know,”_ and Lance gets the answer to that one and about a million more questions to go with it. 

But none of those questions will help Keith tonight. So Lance holds him tighter, blinks against the prickles of heat in his eyes as he listens to Keith tell him _why,_ and tell him that he knows Lance is going to _leave,_ and tell him that he just wants him to _stay._ There isn’t a single person in Keith’s life who’s ever just _stayed,_ and Lance doesn’t know if he’s ever heard anything more awful and painful in his _life._

One thing he does know, though, tucking Keith’s head against his shoulder and listening to him cry and wishing there was _anything_ he could do to take away the hurt, is that he is going to be the one. _He_ is going to stay right here, and he’s going to be _everything_ Keith needs, and if he isn’t everything Keith needs already then he will _make_ himself into what he needs. No matter how hard things get, he is _never_ going to leave him to deal with this alone. That isn't how love works. He tells Keith this, and he knows he doesn't get it—he knows it's going to be a long time before Keith _does_ understand. But for however long it takes—that's what Lance will show him. 

Eventually, he manages to coax Keith underneath the covers and onto his side. He sits beside him, holding his hand as Keith clings tightly, like even this close to sleep, he’s afraid that if he doesn’t hold on to him, Lance will disappear. 

It’s hard to sing to him without choking up while he’s thinking about that, but Lance does it anyway. He’s pretty sure Keith is out by the second line, but he sings the full song anyway—the hushed lyrics that he used to hum to Nadia and Sylvio when they were babies, over and over until their cries quieted down and they fell into the deep, trusting sleep of children secure in the arms of their family. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Keith slept soundly. He hopes that tonight, he will. He prays that sleep will be kind to him, that his dreams will be peaceful, that none of the bad things that haunt his waking moments will follow him there. 

He doesn’t want to leave him alone. He doesn’t want to leave Keith’s side ever again. But Keith only asked him to stay until he fell asleep, and Lance’s throat closes up with revulsion at the _idea_ of doing anything Keith doesn’t want. So he only allows himself another moment with him, eyes blurring as he notes how much _younger_ Keith looks in his sleep. And then he gently slides his hand out of Keith’s, curls it around the side of the pillow so he won’t notice the absence, and quietly leaves the room. 

When he steps back out into the hallway, all he can do for a moment is stare blankly at the door of his own room. Now that he’s left alone with the silence, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. Everything feels like too much, and Lance doesn’t know which part of tonight he’s supposed to take apart first. 

But there’s a voice in his head that isn’t his own—maybe it’s been there this whole time, just muted beneath all of his worry for Keith—but it rises in volume now, tugging at him persistently, fearfully. 

_My boy,_ it says. Only that. _My boy, my boy, my boy._

With a cold suspicion coalescing into something awful in the pit of Lance’s stomach, he turns and makes his way to Red’s hangar. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“You knew, didn’t you?” 

Lance has learned, after all this time, how to parse out the different swirling emotions in Red’s constant, chaotic storm. Red communicates more through _feelings_ than words most of the time, which sometimes makes it difficult for Lance to figure out what she’s trying to say to him. But tonight he understands everything: snapping fear and crushing sadness, a deep _ache_ that Lance can feel in his own bones. _Yes,_ Red says through these, _yes, I know. I know everything._

She tells him what she had done, guilt churning up all around her as she explains, and Lance sits there for a moment in her pilot’s seat just trying to _comprehend_ it, and then another trying not to let his anger at Red overwhelm him. 

It won’t do any good to blame all of this on Red. She knows she fucked up. She’s been trying to make it up to Keith every single moment since then. 

Suddenly, though, everything about Keith’s downward spiral makes sense. It hadn’t started until his bond with her was severed. Everything Red had been dulling for him must have crashed into him like a—like a fucking _tsunami_ when Black claimed him. 

Black won’t do the things that Red did, he infers, from the little Red gives him. She won’t go into the specifics of _what_ she took from Keith’s mind, and he’s a little glad, because no matter how much he wants answers, he doesn’t want to learn them through a third party. It's bad enough that Keith had to be _drunk_ to tell him what little he did. He’s grateful to hear, at least, that Black _is_ doing her best to help—though there’s another, quieter part of him that wishes she _would_ just do what Red did: mute everything to nothing so Keith doesn’t have to hurt all the time. 

But that part of him is small, and quiet, and—childish. Ignoring the problem isn’t going to make it go away. Lance knows that. 

Lance is, by no means, an expert on the topic of trauma. He’s seen some shit, sure—haven’t they all, as the paladins of Voltron?—and he’s seen what that kind of shit _does_ to people, after. He’s met thousands of people permanently affected by the Empire—because the Empire doesn’t _care,_ because they do whatever they want and they hurt people without a _shred_ of remorse, and they take innocent people and they make them bleed until someone stronger stops it or they _die._

It’s Lance’s fury over those things that fuel him; that remind him what he’s fighting for on the hard days when he just wants to go home and leave the universe-saving to someone else. Because it’s easy, sometimes, to take all of those innocent people and turn them into something abstract—something far away, something that _anyone_ could handle, something that doesn’t _have_ to fall onto the shoulders of Lance and his friends. 

But this. _This_ is something different entirely. Because _Keith_ is not something abstract. Keith is with him all the time, and he’s been trying to handle shit that affected him long before he ever knew what the Galra Empire _was,_ and Lance didn’t have a fucking _clue._

In hindsight, maybe he should have. In hindsight, _all_ of the signs were there. Keith’s hypervigilance. His nightmares and insomnia. The way he believes so readily in others’ capacities to be angry with him, but never to show him forgiveness or love. All of his frantic _apologies._ It’s all _textbook_ shit, it’s _all_ of the symptoms—and Lance still missed it. He wonders if he might have come up with a thousand different reasons before _this_ one. He wonders if it was a subconscious ignorance that kept him from clicking the final pieces together, and if maybe that was because Lance didn’t want to believe the reality was even a _possibility._

Lance never wanted to imagine that something like _this_ could _—_ but no, there’s a word for what _this_ is, and Lance can’t skirt around it. _Rape._ That’s what it is, and _that’s_ what happened to Keith. Someone, who knows how long ago, raped Keith, and Keith is _suffering_ every day because of it. 

It’s hard to even _think_ it. It’s even harder than that to process that it’s something that actually _happened._ Because this . . . _this_ is a trauma that happens to _other_ people. As horrible as it is to think it, and as shitty as it makes Lance feel to realize it, rape is the sort of crime that’s always existed as another of those abstract things in his mind: something from tragic news stories about unlucky people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and at the end of the day, have nothing to do with him. 

It’s not supposed to happen to living, breathing people—it’s not supposed to happen to people that Lance loves. It’s not supposed to happen to _Keith,_ his teammate, and best friend, and boyfriend, and just one of the general _best_ people Lance has ever known in his life. He can’t even fathom that someone _could_ hurt someone so kind, and beautiful, and good. But someone _did._

He thinks that he forgets, sometimes, because they’ve been fighting Zarkon for so long, that there are other types of evil that exist in the universe. That some of those evils come from his own planet. But right now, he is fully reminded of how truly _monstrous_ humans can be, and he feels sick to his core because of it. 

Sick, and _furious._ He can feel himself growing angrier with every new question that he can’t stop from forming in his head: wondering _who_ did it, and _how dare they,_ and how old Keith was, and if it was someone Lance _knew._ If he was dating some guy at the Garrison, then Lance _must_ have; the thought makes him sick. And the worst thing of all might be that none of these questions even _matter—_ the only thing that _matters_ is Keith, and all of the other details are about as significant as a piece of space dust—but Lance can’t stop _wondering._ And he can’t stop that anger from rising and swelling and cresting and _bursting_ inside of him, alongside a deeper, iron _pain._ He doesn’t know what to do with all of this _emotion,_ and he wonders, if _this_ is how he feels with only the barest information scraped together in his mind, how much worse must _Keith_ feel, _living_ with this, _all the time?_

He’s not going to let Keith deal with this alone anymore. They’re going to have to talk about it—he already knows that it’s not going to be a fun or easy conversation, for either of them. But they _have_ to talk about it, or else Keith is never going to be able to move on and _live_ his life again. And Lance can’t just sit by and let this kill him. He finds himself thinking, again, about the scars on Keith’s wrists and how they got there. 

He can’t let that happen again. He can’t let Keith _die_ over this—and that means that Lance is going to have to step it up. He needs to be ready for the hard things, and the bad things, and he needs to be strong enough to shoulder the load because Keith _can’t_ carry this alone anymore. And he’s going to have to figure out how to prove to Keith that he’s never going to leave him, and that he’s never going to stop loving him, and that Keith is always going to be _more_ than enough to him. 

He loves him, and they’re going to get through this, _together._

But right now, Keith is sleeping. The whole castle is by now, probably—he doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in Red, but it’s probably been long enough that the others have returned and gone to bed. Lance knows he should sleep, so he’ll be prepared for the long conversation they’re going to have to have in the morning. 

But he can’t even fathom going to sleep, right now. He thinks about going to his bed only to stare at his ceiling until morning, turning over the same awful thoughts and questions all night, and he can’t do it. He’s still so caught up in that _anger,_ in that deep, pulsing _sadness._

“Red,” he says quietly, and breathes in carefully through his nose. “I’m going to need you to be my accountability buddy for the night. Set a timer for a varga.” 

Red’s quiet rumble is the only answer he gets, but he knows she’ll do it. So he leaves her hangar, stopping by his room to change out of his formal clothes and grab his bayard, and then he lets his feet guide him down the all too familiar path to the training deck. 

The training deck is pitch black until Lance flicks on the lights. He can’t help but think about all the nights he sat here in the dark, asking himself _why_ Keith would put himself out here night after night. And while he knows he can’t ever truly _understand_ the feelings that bring him here, he thinks that maybe he gets it now, a little bit more than he did before. 

Lance takes a deep breath as he takes up position in the center of the room, lifting his bayard in steady hands, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. His heart is racing with emotion, his mind furious with all of the thoughts and feelings he can’t fully comprehend in this moment, but his voice is calm and measured as he breathes out, two words ringing in the silence: _“Begin simulation.”_

  
  



End file.
